THE CELEBRATED SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE. 10 THE case of Sir Roger
L'Estrange has been a curious one. In his eighty-eight years of life he played many parts. He fought for the Cavaliers, and was condemned to death by a Parliamentary court-martial in 1643, but lived to head the abortive Kentish rising five years later and to become the first censor of the Press after the Restoration. He was, more- over, one of the earliest popular journalists, and is said to have been the first man of letters to sell himself as a party pamphleteer. A man of strong character and untiring vitality; he survived all these dangerous activities and actually lived into the days of Queen Anne, among the wits of whose reign his pre-eminence in that form of translation which is associated with the names of Motteux and Ned Ward caused the now "celebrated Sir Roger" to become regarded as a twin star with Dryden and arbiter of taste for all those who practised the art of English prose. Subsequent ages have hardly ratified this favourable view. The Whigs, with Macaulay at their head, made a monster of him, and the Tories have been little kinder. It is only lately that his literary reputation has been to some extent re-established by new editions of the best of his translations and by the appreciation of such scholars as Professor Earle and Mr. Charles Whibley. An attempt has even been made by a writer in the recently published Printing Supplement of the Times to defend his moral character. Mr. Kitchen, however, will have none of this whitewashing. True, he does not go so far as did Macaulay, since he claims for the subject of his researches loyalty, courage, and sincerity ; but otherwise his verdict is uniformly adverse, and one can hardly avoid agreeing with him. Corruption, trickery, and cruelty were the weapons with which L'Estrange carried on his warfare against the " libellers " of the press, and so relentlessly did he employ them that no successor ever surpassed him in the execution of his ignoble office.
As for his merits, one may admit his courage, though he showed but poorly in the episode of the Kentish rising, and fled the country sooner than face popular indignation in 1680. But his loyalty was that of the partisan, his sincerity the, sincerity of prejudice and truculence. "A citizen's head is but a thing to try the temper of a soldier's sword upon" was no doubt spoken in all sincerity. But if this is sincerity it is too nearly allied to personal animus. And the same taint
is noticeable everywhere. Even the unremitting zeal which he displayed in his attempts to expose the "Popish Plot" seems to have been largely prompted by his pleasure in "dressing up honest Titus for the pillory." But perhaps one applies too nice a standard to the age in which Sir Roger had the misfortune to live. Even the "libellers," to whose offences we now look back as landmarks in the struggle for the freedom of the press, were not seldom cowardly, corrupt, and itsincere.
Mr. Kitchen has collected a wonderful quantity of evidence, and is able to pick his way through it with commendable
certainty. He writes, of course, for those who have already- some knowledge of the history of the period, and his pages are plentifully garnished with footnotes and references. The ordinary reader may perhaps find the mass of detail a little bewildering, but for the historian it contains a great deal that is both of interest and importance. It is, in fact, more than a "contribution to the history of the press." It is the fullest -story yet written of the period of that history with which it deals. And not the least laudable feature of Mr. Kitchen's treatment is its impartiality. One has only to write twenty lines on "the celebrated Sir Roger" to realize littiv Vitsy it rs to play the partisan.
• L'EstYtiftife Cinitiihution fb theJpefofylif the Phis la tht Century. By George Kitchen. London Kagan aul and Co. [10e. ed. net.]
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